The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-05-09

ighted cigarettse. They carry their burden
ri5ilt across the cemetery to little house,
where two or three men with brass numbers
on their caps are smoking..cigarettse. Here
they show paper and one of the men, pick
ing up spade, tells the boys to follow him.
VII they go, Jogging the coffin now this way
and now that and l follow them.
We come to a long line of brick vaults.
some are empty; some are filled up to the
top with what | presume to be mold The
graVe-dlgger turns over the loose earth with
his spade, and strikes coffin here and there.
1t is too full He moves on to another
hi1cked square, pushes his spade in, and saws
There IS just room. He digs little hole and
lays the coffin flush with the top of the
brickwork, Then he throws few spadefuls
OF earth from mound close by, and the
ceremony IS over. There are thousands of
these brlcked squares in the cemetery, and
each contains score of collins. There is no
stone over the top, only the loose brown
earth. Some Of them are so full that the
earth has to be piled up to cover the coffin,
and thus the coffin is actually above ground.
-, The next funeral arrived as l was leaving
the cemetery. A car, driven by a man
smoking cigarette, came up. It was fol-
lowed by cab from which alighted an old
gentleman, also smoking a cigarette. The
car pulled up at the gate of the ''deposito-
ry," a little house i'll the grounds arranged
Tor the reception of people who have died
too late to be buried that day. The guardian
OF the house, cigarette in mouth, filings open
the doors, speaks to the gentleman, and
then calls for somebody to come A man
with cigarette in his mouth now ap-
proaches. He and the car driver lift out the
coffin and carry it into the house and Law it
ON the trestles. They then light candle at
the head and foot, and come out and
smut the door. Off drives the car.
1iorht
gentleman to whom the corpse belongs
strolls across the cemetery with the grave
digger to choose "his place" The grave
digger turns up a little earth in one brick
square, and then in another. '"Too full )"
says the gentleman, putting his cigarette
lie goes from square to square and pokes at
the loose earth with his cane. At last he
settles ON a square which is only half full
That will do he says, and then he returns
to his cab and drives away
make Inquiries Of the keeper of the ode
pository." The body inside the coffin is the
gentleman's wife. She died last night. She
will be buried tomorrow morning. "Wiu
the gentleman return to see her buried? '
oh, no; he has left her here. The rest con-
Germs us"
We find it difficult to understand this
leaving the dead to be buried without cere-
mony and without friendly watcher, but
the Spaniards think nothing of it. They
bid their dead good-by with the last prayer.
The lnterment is no ceremony at all to them
The dead are hurried out of the house as
soon as possible Sometimes they are sent
to the undertaker's depository" within a
couple of hours Of their decease, and the
friends see no more of them. This. with
the Southern horror of a corpse, one can I'M
derstand. But the cigarette smoking of
hearse drivers, cemetery attendants and
gravediggers while handling the coffin
| strikes the foreign looker-on as, to say the
least OF it, lacking an ordinary respect for
the dead.
Among the poor there is very free-and-
easy way of getting their dead buried One
day outside great cemetery l came upon
three common collins lying on the ground
near the gate. Seeing that the cofiins were
occupied | started back in horror, and asked
what in heavens name such an exhibition
meant CO." said my Spanish friend,
they are poor people who cannot afford to
be buried yet. There is little fee to be
paid. Some one will come by presently
and pay for the coffin to be put away as an
act of charity
Unburied collins are bad enough, but what
| do you think of dead children hung up out
side the cemetery gates, waiting for some
kind soul to pay for them to be put into the
earth! The sight is not uncommon in the
South of Spain, where every form and
shape OF beggary is rampant. Sometimes
the friends of a small corpse, instead of
asking charity, will smuggle it into the
cemetery hidden under a cloak, and, when
no one is looking, drop it into one of the big
square graves | have told you about, and
kick a little loose earth over it. There are
plenty of uncoffined dead under the loose
earth in the great cemetery of Seville.